the.com/bicuspid
A tooth with two cusps, or a valve too lazy to grow a third flap.
means A premolar tooth with two pointed cusps on its biting surface, or more generally anything—like certain heart valves—built with exactly two flaps or points.
from Straightforward Latin carpentry: 'bi-' meaning two, plus 'cuspis' meaning a point or spear-tip. Put them together and you get literally 'two-pointed.' Dentists borrowed the word for the premolars, which sport a pair of cusps where molars pile on more and incisors make do with a single edge; anatomists later reused it for valves like the heart's mitral valve, which closes with two flaps instead of three.
- location
- premolars, between canines and molars
- heart version
- aortic valve, normally has three flaps
- defect
- bicuspid aortic valve affects about 1-2% of people
- etymology
- bi plus cuspis, latin for point